Dance & Science
“Dancing or teaching dance is not just about creating art and/or teaching movement patterns. The essence lies in the creation of an overall working environment that allows a holistic, artistic, creative, healthy development and training of dancers. As such, they are able to present psychological, mental and physical performance at the highest artistic level in exactly the way they would like to. For that it needs the recognition, acknowledgment and holistic promotion of a dancer’s individuality. And that needs tools – which are provided by science.
All of this requires an enormous amount of knowledge in the fields of (preventive) dance medicine, dance science and dance pedagogy on the part of the teachers, trainers and choreographers with the aim of proactively implementing available scientific findings into dance practice. Even better would be to base dance practice on scientific evidence as a matter of course, which would make it possible to specifically improve dance and dance pedagogical performance and prevent injuries to dance professionals in the same targeted way. Science has been available for decades – making active use of it would enable the high performance that everyone strives for.
This is not about senselessly destroying traditions of dance and dance education, but about using scientific evidence to adapt them in such a way that the work of dance professionals can be facilitated and optimized. All dancers strive for peak performance, all dance teachers naturally want to achieve this in their dancers – science as a servant of the art of dance would enable precisely this, while decimating the number of injuries, which are still an extreme burden in all dance styles and levels as well as identifying and eliminating injury risks. Only then can performance really be increased and achieved!
This also includes the well-being and performance of teachers and choreographers themselves: Dance teachers, ballet masters, trainers and choreographers also need support to be able to carry out their very complex, demanding profession and its physical, cognitive and social requirements in a way that also leaves room for their own self-care. They too benefit from our approach, as preventive dance medical Dance Pedagogy© can also pay just as much attention to teaching personnel’s mental, spiritual and physical health as well as maintenance and optimization of their performance.
The same applies to dancers of all styles. The more they know about dance medicine, training science, stress and mind management, communication and many other performance-enhancing and injury-preventing aspects, the more they can keep themselves healthy and specifically improve and protect their performance.
Our aim is to holistically empower the art of dance and the people who create it so that they can achieve, maintain and increase their artistic excellence. Empowering Motivational Climates lead to the highest intrinsic quality of motivation through collaborative learning, respect and the promotion of self-determination and self-concept. In this moment, we all win – and so does the art form of dance!”
Dr. Judith-Elisa Kaufmann in an interview on the curricula of preventive dance medical Dance Pedagogy©, Us&OurBest© and "Me&MyBest©, 2020